The DFL has faced three big existential threats this year.

A truly accurate redistricting would have reflected the fact that so many people have fled incompetent DFL governments and moved to GOP-controlled areas.  While the judges couldn’t avoid reflecting that on some level, they bent over backwards to preserve the DFL; all the Soros money spent on astroturf groups like “Draw The Line” and huge-money liberal lawyers like Darth Lillehaug was well-spent.

Of course, the Legislative GOP caucus is apparently trying its darnedest to back down on “Right To Work”, afraid that the unions will spend tens of millions of dollars attacking pro-Right-To-Work legislators in swing-y districts. Of course, now the unions will spend the money anyway.  Oops.

And finally, Voter ID.   I’m not going to say that Minnesota elections are invalid in a wholesale way.  I am going to say that the evidence points to an awful lot of people voting who shouldn’t be able to, and plenty of vouching fraud, and that it’s been enough to tip close elections.  Enough to give Mark Dayton an 8K vote majority?  Don’t know.  Enough to tip Franken/Coleman?  I don’t doubt it.

Anyway, the Voter ID Amendment goes to the Senate on Friday.  And the unions – freed from having to protest against “Right to Work” (see?) are calling in the clans on Voter ID (emphasis added):

Dear [whomever],

Stand with us as Photo ID moves to the Senate floor

Over the past two months, our campaign to stop the Photo ID amendment made calls, followed the money trail to the doors of Wells Fargo, stood at the Capitol to make our voices heard, and successfully raised over $3,000 in 24 hours.

On Friday afternoon, the Minnesota State Senate will vote on Photo ID. If we are going to keep the amendment off the ballot, we’re going to do it here in the Senate. That’s why we need you there with us, and that’s why we need your help to pack the Capitol:

WHAT: Photo ID Amendment Senate Floor Vote

WHEN: Friday, March 23 — 12:30 p.m.

WHERE: Minnesota State Capitol, 75 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, St. Paul, MN 55155

Click here to RSVP and let us know we can count on seeing you at the Capitol this Friday.

Of course, it’s at a time of the day when most of us people who work for a living – unlike, it seems a lot of unionized government workers – can’t make it to the Capitol.

We’ll come back to that:

Over 215,000 Minnesotans who are are registered to vote do not have a current government-issued ID. The elderly, students, people with disabilities, the working poor and people of color will be especially affected by the amendment if passed. But really, anyone who has ever registered on Election Day, moved, or lost their wallet will have a harder time voting.

Am I alone among all of the people in Minnesota who has to have an ID to drive a car, open a savings account, buy a firearm or ammunition, buy alcohol, open a safe deposit box, get medical treatment, pick up a prescription, turn oneself in for an outstanding warrant, adopt a pet, use a credit card, write a check, rent an apartment, carry out any business with the government, withdraw money from the bank, get a passport, start a new job, enroll for a class, get on a plane, get a hotel room, get a marriage license, rent a car, apply for a loan, close a mortgage, collect bail paid for erroneous arrests, enroll your kid in daycare or buy Sudafed to shut up, quit your whining and get a free freaking ID?

These aren’t just numbers — they are your neighbors, your friends, your family, and quite possibly, you.

All my neighbors and family that don’t drive, save4, shoot, drink, go to the doctor, adopt pets, use plastic, bank, travel, live indoors, go to school or work?  Yep.  It could be any of them.  Or me.

Ya never know.

But I digress:

Like so many bills we’ve seen at the Capitol this year, the Photo ID Amendment is an national attack on our democracy by the 1%. Join us as we raise our voices to protect Minnesota’s democracy for the 99%.

See you at the Capitol on Friday!

Liz Wasserman-Schultz [OK, I changed the name; it’s “Loeb”]

Democracy Campaign Manager

TakeAction Minnesota

P.S. Can you help us pack the Capitol? Ask five friends to join you by forwarding this email, sharing the event page on Facebook, and spreading the word on Twitter.

So there it is.  The DFL is calling in its packs of droogs to bellow their little lungs out tomorrow at the Capitol.

You’re a real Minnesotan.  You work for a living.  You can’t make it to the capitol – and you’re not a “Stand around with a sign” kind of person anyway.  What can you do?

Call your Senator.  Even if you have a mindless DFL hamster (I’m still “represented” by Mary Jo McGuire, which seems bad until you remember that redistricting has put me into Sandy Pappas’ district for the next session), they need to know that opinion is against them.  And the GOP needs to know that that 4:1 margin of Minnesotans who support Voter ID is really out there.

So call.

And remember their vote in November.

From the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department page on “Turning Yourself In“, if you have an outstanding warraint:

Individuals with an active arrest warrant can turn themselves in 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the Adult Detention Center (425 Grove Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota).

Individuals turning themselves in are encouraged to provide the Sheriff’s Office with as much information as possible related to why they are wanted.

When turning yourself in, please bring the following items:

• Valid state or federal issued photo identification, such as a driver’s license
• Current prescription medications in original sealed and labeled packaging
• Clothing appropriate for the season
• Cash for bail (if appropriate)
• Necessary personal assistive aids, such as glasses, hearing aids, or orthopedic devices

Has anyone told Mark Ritchie?

Another liberal state.

Another state where you can practically register your dog as a voter:

The video, a sequel to O’Keefe’s “Primary of the Living Dead” in New Hampshire, shows a Veritas agent entering various voting places around the state of Vermont, giving a different name each time. Each time, he is given a ballot without showing an ID, to his disbelief.

In the video, the agent repeatedly requests (but does not take) a Republican primary ballot. As he explained to Breitbart.com: “We wanted to remind viewers this is not a partisan issue. This is a situation wherein anyone — Republican or Democrat — can exploit the system.”

The new video follows in the wake of a highly-politicized media attack on Mr. O’Keefe after his exposure of voter fraud in New Hampshire. Those videos resulted in calls from the left for O’Keefe’s arrest. However, the videos soon resulted in the New Hampshire State Senate passing a new bill requiring voter ID.

This comes on top of the expose on Minnesota’s comical voter registration system last month.

Just a hunch – but a few hundred more of these and we may just reach a tipping point.

Last month, Minnesota’s American Civil LIberties Union chapter ran a publicity stunt, offering a thousand dollar reward for an example of a case of voter fraud that a Voter ID Amendment would have caught.

Today, the Minnesota Majority took the stunt ball and rran, producing a case and putting in its clam for the reward:

Dan McGrath, executive director of Minnesota Majority, produced court records from an Anoka County case involving voting in the 2008 election. The records concern an Andover woman who was charged with three felonies. According to the records, prosecutors believe she voted in person in her own name, and by absentee ballot in the name of her daughter, who was away at college.

The daughter also voted near her college in the same election. The mother, according to records produced by McGrath, pleaded guilty to one of the charges and was sentenced to probation in August of 2011.

I”ll be asking McGrath for the names.  I’ll bet dimes to dollars the woman voted DFL both times.

But that’s not really the subject of this post.

No, I have two other observations.

Is Jim Ragsdale Gunning For Lori Sturdevant’s Gig?: Ragsdale kicked off his piece with the following, to which I’ve added emphasis:

A small conservative activist group known as the Minnesota Majority, which has been investigating voting irregularities in Minnesota for years, claimed a $1,000 prize offered by the ACLU for finding a case of fraud that a photo ID requirement would have prevented.

So the MInnesota Majority is “small” and “conservative” – but the ACLU is omniscient and balanced?

Why does Ragsdale feel the need to  label Minnesota Majority’s ideology but not that of the ACLU?

And why does he call it “small”, when the MM likely puts more activists out in the field on any given day than the ACLU – which is, let’s not forget, a couple of lawyers in an office in Saint Paul and a “membership” that is largely a list of donors?

Mr. Ragsdale:  Editorialize much?

So How Much Fraud Does The Left Find Acceptable?: Greta Bergstrom, who works for “Take Action Minnesota”, tweeted:

A college student was impersonated by her mom. Seriously? This is the “voting threat” in MN? #mnleg #stribpol

Let’s try to illustrate this for you.  Let’s say that the Koch Brothers forges a ballot on a referendum to ban abortion.  That forged ballot negated the vote of one pro-choice woman.  Would that level of fraud be acceptable?  Just one pro-choice woman?

Think hard, Greta.  Crank that finely-honed progressive propaganda-bot mind up to “puree” and cough up an answer.

You can do it.  I just know you can.

Just before the 2010 elections, Monty Jensen of Brainerd saw what he believed to be extreme irregularities in voting in Crow Wing County; a busload of adults from a group home having their ballots filled out for them by group home workers, he alleged.

Since then, Jensen’s story has been taken up by Eric Shawn of Fox News; it’s shown that at least four adults who were not legally entitled to vote, and in one case had no awareness of political whatsoever, voted at exactly the time Monty Jensen said they did, and has been the subject of a grand jury “probe” that was too fraught with irregularities to be called a “farce” with a straight face.  It’s also brought Jensen and some of his supporters in for some fairly ugly and irresponsible criticism from DFL activists in the Brainerd area as well as some elements of the Minnesota lefty alt-media.

And today, the case – or rather, the “investigation” of the case – is going to be the subject of a complaint by the Minnesota Voters Alliance.

Here’s an outline of the complaint:

Plaintiffs

Plaintiffs are the Minnesota Voters Alliance, the Minnesota Freedom Council, State Representative Sondra Erickson, Montgomery Jenson, Ron Kaus, Jodi Lyn Nelson, and Sharon Stene

Defendants
Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State

Lori Swanson, Minnesota Attorney General

Joe Mansky, Ramsey County Elections Manager

John Choi, Ramsey County Attorney

Laureen E. Borden, Crow Wing Auditor-Treasurer

Donald F. Ryan, Crow Wing County Attorney

Minnesota Constitution

One basis for our claims is that Article VII, Section 1 of the Minnesota Constitution requires the state to confirm the eligibility-to-vote of every person it permits to vote, in every election:

Section 1. ELIGIBILITY; PLACE OF VOTING; INELIGIBLE PERSONS. Every person 18 years of age or more who has been a citizen of the United States for three months and who has resided in the precinct for 30 days next preceding an election shall be entitled to vote in that precinct. The place of voting by one otherwise qualified who has changed his residence within 30 days preceding the election shall be prescribed by law. The following persons shall not be entitled or permitted to vote at any election in this state: A person not meeting the above requirements; a person who has been convicted of treason or felony, unless restored to civil rights; a person under guardianship, or a person who is insane or not mentally competent.

The State fails to meet its Constitutional duty to confirm the eligibility of election-day registrants.

In 2008, for example, the state “waived” the eligibility requirements for more than 500,000 election-day registrants by not confirming their eligibility to vote.

The State fails to confirm eligibility of voters even after the election.

As of today, there are still more than 48,000 persons listed in the State’s voter registration database who registered on election-day 2008 and whose eligibility to vote have not been confirmed.

In fact, persons who are known to be positively ineligible to vote had their ballots counted in 2008.

At least 1,500 ineligible felons voted in 2008.

Minnesota has a history of close elections.

The Complaint describes the 1916 presidential election in Minnesota won by 392 votes, the 1962 race for governor won by 91 votes, several state races won by less than 90 votes including a loss by Plaintiff Sondra Erickson by 89 votes in 2008, and the 2001 school board race in which Plaintiff Jody Lyn Nelson lost by one vote.

Both the U.S. and the Minnesota Constitution afford individuals the right to “associate” for political purposes.

When the state waives the eligibility requirements for election-day registrants, it allows unconfirmed, and potentially ineligible, voters to interfere with the constitutional right of the candidate and his or her supporters to come together for political purposes. In effect, the ineligible voter illegally associates himself with the candidate by affecting the candidate’s opportunity to be elected.

Both the U.S. and the Minnesota Constitution afford individuals the right to “due process” by which they can defend their other rights.

The State does not allow eligible voters a means to defend the interference with their right of association created when ineligible persons vote on election day.  Eligible voters have no way to know who is ineligible but the State does have the means and does not deploy it for the purpose of enabling eligible voters the opportunity to challenge those persons who are harming their right to vote.

Both the U.S. and the Minnesota Constitution afford individuals the right to “equal protection” under the law.

Minnesota’s statutes which require the confirmation of eligibility for some voters and which, at the same time, allow other voters to have their ballots counted without being confirmed, treat voters unequally.

The “guardianship” and “not mentally competent” parts of Article Vii, Section 1 are unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.

These statements in the Minnesota Constitution that prohibit all persons under guardianship or declared to be mentally incompetent are too broad because they do not afford the person (the ward) the right to challenge having his voting rights stripped away.

The state statutes regarding procedures for guardianships are also constitutionally defective because they violate the ward’s right to due process.

Under current state law, the person under guardianship retains his right to vote unless the court takes it away.  The involvement of the court provides, in principle, the ward with a process (that satisfies his rights under the U.S. Constitution) for challenging any attempt to remove his right to vote.

Notwithstanding, current statutes do not provide for testing the capacity of the ward to understand the nature and effect of voting.  Further, the current statutes do not provide for informing the ward that his right to vote has been abrogated.

This effort, like most anything conservatives do on the subject, has been portrayed as “voter intimidation” by bloggers and others more concerned with upholding DFL dogma than the law.  It’s rubbish, of course; the proximate issue is the exploitation of vulnerable adults.  If a group home forces vulnerable adults to vote, what else will they do?

(Now, if the group home in question were owned by a GOP sympathizer, and the ballot was allegedly being stuffed for, I dunno, Tom Emmer, you just know the story would be different, don’t you?)

Between 70% and 80% of Minnesota voters favor the Voter ID proposal.

Some of us favor it because it’s the first step in a series of election reforms that will help us ensure that our election system in fact has integrity; there are increasingly strong suspicions that the election system in Minnesota, with its reports of fraudulent election-day un-identified vouched registrations (among other abuses), lacks that integrity.

Others have the common sense to know that 32 states currently require some degree of voter ID, and elections work just fine; the elderly and students register and vote, just like adults (significantly, most of the non-ID states are Democrat, including states renowned for dirty elections, like Illinois, New York, New Jersey and California)

But for whatever reason, Minnesota voters overwhelmingly favor the measure.  Even in the most “conservative” poll on the subject, the Survey USA poll which showed a 71-23 margin of support overall, the measure even wins among declared liberals, 35-32.

So the anti-ID crowd is getting desperate.

And to paraphrase Gandhi, when you’re fighting the DFL machine on a subject like this, first they ignore you.

Then they mock you.

And  then they call you a racist.

The site was sponsored – apparently – by “Take Action Minnesota”, an astroturf group thats is basically what all of the various non-profit Wellstone cults became over the last decade or so.

And – oboy.  A black guy in a striped suit.  Not good.  Tone deaf.  Politically-incorrect.

And, in the special little world of the liberal astroturf group, I suppose it,  all by itself, invalidates the entire move to bring integrity back to our voting system.

BAD MN Majority.

MN Majority came out with another – which also aroused TakeAction’s drearily predictable ire:

Lest you think all TakeActionMN does is do screenshots, there was some writing and stuff too:

This image is on a Minnesota Majority website. It is trying to scare us into changing our state constitution to require a photo ID to vote. Photo ID would restrict voting rights for over half a million Minnesotans – especially people of color. Photo ID is voter suppression. And it stops here.

I’m always puzzled by the notion that requiring an ID to vote – like we require them for lesser “rights” like cashing a check, using a credit card, setting up a bank account, getting a Social Security Card, getting a copy of your birth certificate, buying Sudafed, getting into a bar, buying a firearm or ammunition, buying a car, taking out a loan, dropping your kids off and picking them up at drop-in daycare, buy alcohol or cigarettes, apply for welfare, food stamps or any sort of medical assistance, rent an apartment, get admitted to a hospital, or get a marriage license – “disenfranchises” anyone, much less ten percent of all Minnesotans, as “Take Action MN” claims.   Or, for that matter, that VoterID infringes, in and of itself, on the right to vote.  It doesn’t; it merely means you need an ID to do it.

Indeed, once you get past cartoon pratfalls, it’s TakeAction that makes the genuinely racist claim – the ludicrous and frankly offensive notion that ten percent of Minneostans – apparently, all minorities, students and the elderly, although nobody has any idea where they got that number, and next month it could very well be “eleventy-teen percent” and nobody will say “boo”.   But to me, their claims sound a lot like “minorities and people of color are too dumb to keep track of their paperwork and ID cards”.

I’m sure that’s not what they meant.

At any rate – we know how Gandhi’s bromide ends; “Then you win”.

TakeAction and the rest of the Minnesota astroturf cult are getting increasingly desperate on this issue, as well as the other big wedge issue likely headed for the ballot this fall, an amendment to make Minnesota a Right to Work state.  Without fraudulent votes and endless union money, the DFL’s position in Minnesota will get a lot weaker.

And that’s a big win for everyone, no matter what your race, ethnicity, or relentless political correctness.

Over at Kool Aid Report, Learned Foot not only agrees with Keith Ellison, but goes him one better.

The MinnPost has a new design.  It’s a lot more readable, so kudos to them (or to whoever did the redesign).

Of course, with the new design comes what seems to this long-time reader a renewed commitment to passive-aggressively support the DFL even more.

Jay Nord asks if W voters will mind that Voter ID will delay election results:

Are Minnesotans willing to wait up to 10 days after the election to find out who won in races ranging from governor to local officials?

That prospect was raised at Wednesday’s Senate Local Government and Elections Committee meeting during discussion of the proposed Voter ID constitutional amendment.

The measure passed 8 to 6 on a party-line vote after an hour and a half of discussion. That action drew a round of boos from the hearing room filled with protesters.

At the session, the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office expressed concern that implementing provisional balloting could stretch the amount of time needed to count election results and that it could force earlier primary dates.

“Nobody’s going to know who won any of the elections until at least 10 days or more afterwards,” Secretary of State staff member Beth Fraser told the committee. “I know that people are on pins and needles on election night. That feeling is going to last for quite a while if we don’t know for more than 10 days who won anything in Minnesota from governor down to school board.”

Speaking just for myself here?  Who cares.  Oh, I think the “ten days” figure is a sign of the Secretary of State is sandbagging to try to gin up yet another public meme to give the pro-corruption forces something to chant about.

Outside the media – including the MinnPost  – who want to sell lots of papers and have lots of eyeballs tuned in to their election-night coverage or websites?  I’d be amazed if you found anyone that cared about a wait (and if Mark Ritchie’s office says “Ten days”, assume it means “two days”).   Outside the media?  Most of our lives don’t hinge, day by day, on any of these races – even those of us who follow this stuff closely.

But let’s take Ritchie at his word (always dangerous) and answer the question.

Yes.  I’ll trade a “ten day” wait for actual election integrity (which’ll involve a lot more than just voter ID, but it’s a start).  Every time.

But let’s stop for a moment here.  Apparently in the world of the liberal “alternative” media, some delays are better than others.

I don’t recall the MinnPost caterwauling over the delays forced on election results by “Instant Runoff Voting”, which has led to long, pointless delays to getting election results, and to a system with a byzantine, convoluted vote-counting formula that is both opaque to most voters and which admits up front that it disenfranchises voters.

So let’s summarize:  results delayed due to a system blessed by one-party DFL governments that obfuscates the election process and guarantees a certain percentage of votes will end up not being counted?  Just hunky-dory to the MinnPost.

Results delayed (maybe, according to a Secretary of State who reports to George Soros) due to a “GOP plan” that will be a solid first step to ensure our elections have integrity and don’t disenfranchise legitimate voters with a wave of illegitimate ones?

Oh, what do you think?

The video that’s swept the nation…

…and kept the DFL/media (pardon the redundancy) spin machine up all weekend.

I was out of town last week during Governor Dayton’s frankly weird performance, referring to supporters of the “Right To Work” amendment as “Extreme”.

More on that – it ties in closely with my piece on the DFL’s new PR effort to flood the state with unsupportable memes on wedge issues designed to fool the uninformed and gullible – later this week.

It’s just interesting to note how many “extremists” there are out there, according this SurveyUSA poll covering Minnesotans’ attitudes on the Gay Marriage, Right To Work and Voter ID amendments seem to show that a majority of Minnesotans are, by Governor Dayton’s self-indulgent standard, “Extremists”.

Let’s go through the numbers one issue at a time:

Marriage Amendment

This is the weakest of the bunch so far; it’s winning by 47-39, and over the top in most of the cross tabs (other than 18-34 year olds, cell phone users, Democrats, Liberals and people making over $80K a year).

This is in line – and maybe a little better – than the results I found in the fall of 2010, when a Lawrence Poll showed that Minnesotans’ preferences swung strongly to Tom Emmer when they were clear that Emmer supported referenda or legislative rulings on the issue, while Dayton and Horner both supported legislating the issue from the bench.

The problem is that these numbers aren’t nearly good enough to pass the bill, given one quirk in Minnesota’s law when voting on constitutional amendments; blank votes are counted as “no” votes.  Everyone who supports an amendment must vote affirmatively “yes”.

So let’s assume the numbers in this poll’s “Not Sures” – 4% overall – break evenly between Yes and No on election day, bringing the actual results to 49-41 in favor; then “Not Votes” stay on the sidelines, becoming “No” votes, making the final vote a bare 51-49 against.  That’s not counting “Ritchie Votes”: the dead, people being vouched into multiple districts, people who aren’t legally entitled to vote, and the like.

Even without that, the measure loses by default. By this count, the Marriage Amendment needs to arf up at least three more points – five as insurance against “Ritchie Votes”.

With a state this polarized, it’s a tall order.

Right To Work

Minnesota is much less polarized here – and it shows.  Governor Dayton’s memes on the subject have been more fact-free and desperate than usual – “right to work states have lower wages!”, he declared, ignoring the other context (closed shop states tend to be more urban, coastal and have much higher costs of living as well as wages) – showing how hard the DFL is going to have to dig for votes on this issue.

“Right To Work” leads 55-24% overall.  It leads in every single cross tab – the narrowest is 35-32 among identified liberals.  Bad news for the DFL – it leads among women even more than among men; more among the young than the old;

More importantly?   Even if you take the 12% “not sure” vote and split it evenly among “Yes”, “No” and “Not Voting” , the numbers become 59-28-13, which really means 59-41 (remember, blank votes become “No”, as noted above).  Even if every undecided voter decides to side with the unions – in other words, the hopelessly unrealistic breaks, things about as likely as me getting a third date with Amy Adams – or just sit the issue out, the issue ends up at 55-45.

It’ll take a lot of “Ritchie Votes” to beat “the extremists” on this issue.

Photo ID

Perhaps the best news of the poll is that the left’s idiot memes about Voter ID – “it disenfranchises the poor, the elderly and college students – are falling not so much on deaf ears, but ears that mock their idiocy.

During the 2010 campaign, the meme of the right was that Voter ID had 2-1 support in Minnesota.  The SUSA poll shows it’s actually 3-1 with a bullet; the measure currently leads 70-23.

The cross tabs?  Again – the measure is more popular among women than men (73% of women favor it, vs. 66% of men); more among younger voters, with a 77-20 lead among 35-49 year old voters); more among the educated (71-24 among college grads ys 63-23 among high school grads); about evenly across all income bands; even by 69-24 in the Twin Cities.

Most significantly?  Only 4% of Minnesotans are undecided on the subject, and 4% more claimed they’ll “not vote” on the issue.  Even if every single undecided voter is convinced to vote against the issue or sit it out, the measure passes 70-31%.

Even Mark Ritchie will have a hard time rigging this one.

Takeaways

Caveat up front; the conclusions below presume the SUSA poll is accurate.  The poll is of registered voters, rather than likely voters, which is inherently less accurate on the one hand, but traditionally skews things to the left on the other hand; for purposes of the conclusions below, I’ll presume those two factors roughly cancel each other out.

GOP legislative candidates need to closely align themselves with the Right To Work and Photo ID issues.  They need to hammer on their support for Right to Work and Voter ID, and the positive things that both bring to this state – more jobs, and an election system with actual integrity (although Voter ID is only one of many reforms needed).

The Marriage Amendment strikes me as a loser for GOP candidates – not because it’s off the ideological beam (although as a libertarian conservative, I’m less enthusiastic about it than some Republicans), but because presuming that this poll is accurate, candidates will spend more time and effort supporting the amendment than being supported by it.  By tying themselves to amendments that seem likely to pass overwhelmingly and which show the deep wedge between the DFL and the GOP, on issues where the DFL is both wrong and diametrically opposed to a crushing majority of Minnesotans, the GOP wins free votes; the Marriage Amendment will cost time and effort to prop up at the polls.  Not to say the votes can’t be found, but it’s going to take a lot of time and effort – which is the job of the various pro-marriage groups, not candidates.

The other takeaway, in light of the Governor’s prate and gabble on the subject(s)?  In every case, with all three of these amendments, the conservative, “extreme” position is the mainstream.

But we knew that.

See more on the subject from Ed Morrissey.

Via Breitbart.

SCENE:  MITCH is talking with Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, a meme-buffer at Alliance For A Better Minnesota, at a Cathedral Hill bar.

CARROLL is sitting at a table with an empty martini glass, sipping a cosmpolitan from a second as MITCH approaches.

CARROLL:  We have teh best election system in teh world!

MITCH:  Um, OK – why do you say that?

CARROLL:  Because we get teh most people to teh polls!

MITCH: Well, OK – that’s cool as far as it goes, but if a significant number of those “people” at the polls are duplicate voters, or voters who aren’t supposed to be voting, then each of those votes negates the vote of someone who is entitled to vote, and only votes one time.

CARROLL:  That never happens in Minnesota.

MITCH:  Well, it’s been proven to happen.  The Minnesota Majority has brought hundreds of cases of felons voting and other people who weren’t supposed to vote to the Ramsey County Attorney, and gotten a few dozen election fraud convictions.

CARROLL: Only a few dozen of teh convictions!  Our system is teh PERFECT!

MITCH:  Well, no – because in Minnesota, unless you’re a paroled felon who hasn’t had is rights restored and who signed a piece of paper acknowledging you realize that not voting was part of your parole, pleading “I didn’t know” actually is considered an excuse.  And in every case, their votes were counted.  All of them.   Oh, yeah – and they busted a group home shoveling four – so far – vulnerable adults through the polls during the 2010 elections.  They were using the handicapped to stuff the ballots.  A county attorney basically used a grand jury to whitewash the empirical fact that four adults who are under guardianship, and under Minnesota statute have no right to vote, were registered to vote and voted absentee – basically had their ballots filled out for them by group home employees.   It’s full-blown corruption.

CARROLL:  So you want to disenfranchise teh people!

MITCH:  Blah blah blah.  Another stupid manipulative strawman – but hey, you work for Alliance for a Better Minnesota, so pardon my redundancy.  Nope, untrue.  Every who is entitled to vote should vote.

CARROLL:  Yabbut, what about teh elderly and students!  20% of them don’t have IDs.

MITCH:  OK, so two points, here.  For starters, isn’t it reasonable to ask people to assume a certain bare minimum of responsibility to exercise a franchise that over a million Americans have died defending?  And second:  all significant political parties have “get out the vote” efforts that make sure people get to the polls on election day.  So expand the effort to making sure people have IDs.  I mean, what – do I have to do all the thinking for you?

CARROLL:  See!  You want to disenfranchise teh people!

MITCH:  Er, Lucky?  I just described exactly why I don’t.

CARROLL:  Yeah, but…where’s my cosmo?

MITCH:  In front of you.

CARROLL:  Thanks.  (Drains a cosmopolitan, waves down a waitress).  But none of that is necessary.

MITCH:  Um, what?  “None of that is necessary?”  I’ve just shown you where hundreds of people voted illegally – and I didn’t even get into the credible allegations that students were voting in Minnesota and, via absentee ballot, in their home jurisdictions.

CARROLL:  But all of that is teh BS.

MITCH:  Um, why?

CARROLL:  Because we have teh best electoral system in teh world?

(WAITRESS appears at table)

MITCH:  She’ll have a cosmo.  I’ll have a double Laphraoig, neat.

WAITRESS:  Is she seeing unicorns again?

MITCH: You know it.

(And SCENE)

STOP THE PRESSES!

Yet another lefty writer has discovered that Republicans are TEH HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES! 

In this case, it’s one Brad Friedman over at the HuffPo:

For all of their years of claims that massive voter fraud is going on at the polling place, such that photo ID restrictions are required to ensure the integrity of the vote, youd think that when Republicans have a chance to run their own elections, theyd be sure to want it to be as “fraud”-free as possible.Nonetheless, despite onerous polling place photo ID requirements now passed into law in about a dozen states where the GOP controls both the legislative and executive branches, voters will be able to cast their ballot in next Tuesdays “First-in-the-Nation” Republican Iowa caucuses without bothering to show a photo ID — even though the Republican Party itself sets their own rules for voting there.

Wow.  That could mean the GOP are a bunch of TEH HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES! 

Or it might mean that a statewide caucus is open only to registered activists, and that a party precinct will have a better-than-fair idea of who their registred members are, and it’s completely different than an actual election.

Minnesota’s redistricting process – mandated by constitutions all up and down the governmental food chain to reallocate our congressional and legislative representation after accounting for changing populations – usually goes a little something like this:

1. The party in the power in the legislature draws maps that favor their desired outcome, more or less.
2. The opposing party draws maps that favor their desired outcome, more or less.
3. Either neither of them wins legislative approval, or the sitting governor (generally) vetoes the legislature’s final product.
4. The process goes to the courts, which draws its own map, imposes it on the state, and leaves behind some legal precedents and pseudo-legal guidelines (“preserve communities of interest”, “keep districts compact and contiguous”, etc, etc) for the next time through the process.
5. Lather, rinse and repeat.

And we’ve followed that basic process this time.  The GOP-controlled legislature, led by Rep. Sarah Anderson, drew up a congressional and a legislative map.  According to Kent Kaiser of the “Draw The Line Minnesota” (henceforth DTLM) “Citizen’s Commission on Redistricting” (which I”ve written about at some length in the past – about the commission’s sham nature, Kaiser’s protestations about the commission’s process and DTLM’s opacity, and in the end about the joke they played on us all), the Legislature’s map hewed pretty closely to the precedents set over the past forty years or so of court decisions on the subject.  It did seemingly create a map with four safe-ish conservative seats, three safe DFL seats, and a fairly swing-y district.  The DFL association of various non-profits checkbook advocacy groups that does all the ground work for the DFL cried foul, of course.

Wrongly, I suggest.  The parts of this state that lean DFL – Duluth, the Twin Cities, the Range – have shrunk, at least partly due to people moving away from them and to the parts that actually work.  Which are largely GOP-leaning; the exurban Metro from the third tier of ‘burbs on out, the Rochester area, the drive-through land between Maple Grove and Saint Cloud.  Places with responsible, frugal, in-their-limits municipal government and good schools.

“Draw The Line Minnesota” (DTLM) submitted its congressional and legislative maps next.

And then, finally, last week, with much ado, the DFL’s current caretaker, Ken Martin, released the DFL’s official submissions (congressional and  legislative), to a chorus of catcalls…

…from the DFL.  The plan lumped Betty McCollum and Michele Bachmann into one large (and conveniently DFL-dominated) east-metro district – without telling McCollum:

The Minnesota DFL Party submitted a congressional redistricting plan Friday that would place Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum into a district with GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann…The plan has prompted McCollum’s chief of staff to send an e-mail criticizing the proposal.

 

“The DFL Chair and his high-paid lawyers have proposed a congressional map to the redistricting panel that is hyper-partisan and bizarre,” McCollum’s chief of staff Bill Harper said in the email. “Their plan ignores the judge’s redistricting criteria and it insults established communities of interest, particularly in the Twin Cities East Metro. Congresswoman McCollum has faith in the judges on the panel to draw fair political boundaries that will serve the best interests of all Minnesotans.”

That answers the question “is Bettymac capable of thinking a thought that isn’t blessed by her party’s higher-ups, anyway.

Dave Mindeman of mnpACT wonders:

I can’t decide for sure what the DFL strategy was here. Obviously, the elimination of Bachmann from a safe district was the main goal, but alienating your solid incumbents is an unnecesary side bar. As far as numbers go, a tweak to shore up Walz and another tweak to make Cravaack a little more vulnerable would have accomplished pretty much the same split guaranteed….a 5-3 DFL majority. The DFL lines work to that 5-3 with eliminating Bachmann….the tweaking of current lines would have been a 5-3 without Cravaack.

Mindeman, like a lot of DFL pundits, accepts it as a matter of faith that they’ll beat Cravaack next fall, in much the same way that they accepted that he’d get 30% of the ballot in 2010.  But that’s not really the subject of this post.

No, it’s that I, too, wonder what the DFL’s strategy is.

And to explain the strategy, I think I’m going to refer to the newly-minted “Berg’s Twelfth Law of Hyperbolic Empiricism”.

To wit:  “The humorous or hyperbolic explanation of “progressive” behavior is likely, in direct proportion to the recklessness, extralegality, deviance or confrontiveness of the “progressive” actions being analyzed, to be the correct explanation“.

And knowing that, the hyperbolic reason – “they are trying to release something so far removed to the left that the courts, applying their traditional Scandinavian conflict-aversion to the issue, in trying to split the difference between the DFL and Legislative plans, will find “the middle” is about as far to the left as the DFL really wanted in the first place”.

I’d put money on it.

You’ve probably heard:  Saint Paul had its first “Instant Runoff Vote” last week.

And I think the results demonstrated why so many cities that have tried to implement IRV have repealing it.

Doug Bass was less unimpressed by it than I was, and he helpfully ran an instant replay on the St. Paul Ward 2 “Instant Runoff”; 61% of Ward 2 voters initially rejected incumbent councilman Dave Thune, who won after three rounds of counting.  Bass unpacks the whole process (read the whole thing).

Bass concludes:

At this point, Im willing to accept that IRV provides a reasonable snapshot of the will of the people, until shown otherwise.  I would like to see the returns in more detail.  For example, out of all the first choice ballots for Thune, how were the second choices distributed?  Did a ballot with Thune as the fifth choice put him over the top?  Someone might say its none of my business.  But that doesnt keep me from wondering.

I have more pedestrian worries.  The campaigns this time around seemed to worry more about how to game the ranked-choice system than they did on actually talking issues.  Granted, it’s a one-party city, so they never have to actually talk issues.

Which is a signal fact of Instant Runoff Voting; it seems to get adopted in one-party cities like Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Tacoma and the like.  Could it work in a place with competitive races?

We may never know.  I’m not aware that it’s been tried.  And even many of the one-party cities that adopted it in a wave of fanfare over the past decade are quietly retiring the idea.

What do they know that we don’t?

It’s mostly a rhetorical question.

Every once in a while, when I drop some factoid or another into a “debate” with a lib, I’ll wrap it with a bit of a verbal end-zone happy dance; “Sometimes”, I’ll say, “reality is just plain conservative”.

With that in mind – the five-member Judicial Redistricting Panel has ruled on the rules to be used in redistricting…

…and it’s generally good news for those who support following the rules as they’ve sprung up over the past forty years or so:

For the first time, the panel said the metropolitan area should be regarded as 11 counties, not seven. As a result more exurban counties could be tied into districts in suburban and urban areas.

That was an approach Republicans favored, said Elizabeth Brama who represents the Republican party on redistricting. She said it’s unclear what effect the change will have.

“I don’t think it’s a question of one party or the other benefiting,” Brama said. “I think it’s more a question of just fairly representing where the people in the state of Minnesota live and how they organize themselves.”

Which, to be honest, is what the GOP has been shooting for all along; as Dr. Kent Kaiser has pointed out in numerous forums, the plan passed by the Legislature – really the GOP majority – did a good job of sticking to the letter and spirit of the body of law that this state has developed in its decades of sending these questions to the courts to decide.

It was the DFL that’s gone partisan; Mark Dayton vetoed the Legislature’s plan for purely partisan grounds.  (Actually, I suspect it was less “partisan” than that the unions, Alliance for a Better Minnesota and other groups that control the DFL didn’t give him permission to pass it).  And a group of groups that, by any rational measure, call at least some of the DFL’s shots – the groups behind “Draw The Line MN” – took their shot at skewing the system to favor “communities of interest” which, inevitably, are DFL constituencies.

Now, I’m going to do just a bit of place-keeping her for future debates.  I’ll add emphasis to this next bit, from Ken Martin, former head of “Win Minnesota”, one of the groups that funneled money from unions and liberals with deep pockets into the DFL’s campaign coffers, especially for their sleazy, toxic campaign against Tom Emmer last year.  He is the current chair of the DFL.

DFL party chair Ken Martin wasn’t surprised by those changes.

“I think it’s pretty pro forma and certainly establishes a lot of the same principles that were in place ten years ago,” Martin said. “Again, without discussing this further with my team and being able to look at it more in detail, I can’t comment any more than that. But on the surface I think it’s fine. I don’t think it give any party an advantage over another.”

I’m emphasizing those passages now, for later.  Because you just know that if the Judicial Panel draws the lines based on these rules, the DFL and the groups that call its shots – the public employee unions, Alliance For A Better Minnesota, the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits, the League of Women Voters, Take Action Minnesota and Common Cause – will be screeching exactly the opposite, and demanding that you forget history in the bargain.

Because it’s a fairly simple thing – if you follow the rules set down in the past several court-decided apportionment decisions, the GOP should benefit; the parts of the state that support the GOP have grown, while the DFL parts have shrunk.  This represents many things – but we can not discount the fact that one of the key “communities of interest” are “people who moved to get the hell away from the cesspools the DFL has created” in the Twin Cities and Duluth.

The judical panel’s deadline to produce a redistricting map is February 21.

Al Stene – who was thrust into the center of the Crow Wing County voter fraud scandal – has tragically passed away.

From a source close to the Stene family:

I just got off the phone with Sharon Stene. She said that Al had died yesterday of a heart attack. He had just returned home with James Stene after Crow Wing County had denied justice for the exploitation of their son James at Clark Lake Homes by Lynn Peterson. No one in Crow Wing County helped him and his son. In talking with Al before he left you could tell just how heart broken he was. I had never seen Al that way in all the years I have known him.

Let’s be clear on exactly what happened:  as we showed a few weeks back, there was clear, documentary evidence that four vulnerable adults who had been ruled incompetent to vote (along with Stene, who had never been ruled incompetent, but in testimony to the Crow Wing County Commission showed no interest in or knowledge of elections) were in the Crow Wing County Courthouse exactly when Monty Jensen said they were, and all voted, despite not only the court orders but the presence of group home workers who are supposed to keep their charges in compliance with the law.  The County Attorney convened a grand jury – which, in case the point is lost on you, essentially confirmed that everw single thing claimed by Stene, Monty Jensen and the Freedom Council was true, but nonetheless ruled (according to sources close to the case) that ignorance of the law is an excuse under Minnesota law, at least when it comes to election fraud.

This is tragedy beyond words. Please pray for his family. Al is in a better place, the is justice there.

I spoke with Al Stene.last spring,  He was furious at his son’s exploiitation at the hands of the group home staff – and at the sense of entitlement they expressed at his objections.

Yesterday, we talked about the main body of Kent Kaiser’s long, scathing letter (provided in its entirety below the jump) to the judicial redistricting panel.   In the first part, I covered his commentary about the map that “Draw The Line” and its “Citizens Commission” released.

Today – Kaiser’s comments about the commission, and about “Draw The LIne” itself. Emphasis is added.

Beyond my concerns about having only one, minimally critiqued map to consider, I have other concerns about Draw the Line, having to do mainly with the credibility and transparency of the commission’s products. As one of only two “known” Republicans (the other besides me being Anne Mason) on the commission of 15 members, I constantly stressed the need to verify that everything done by the commission was done in a nonpartisan way. Such verification was never made possible, and I really believe such verification was necessary in order to ensure the integrity of our deliberations.

And Kaiser pointed out exactly what I did a few weeks back; the “Citizens’ Commission” is nothing but a thin layer of astroturf on “Draw The Line”‘s leadership’s centralized push for a DFL-friendly gerrymandering job.

Kaiser brings up a number of points…:

My concerns about our commission’s credibility are grounded by several points and are shared by other commission members who have spoken with me individually.

• I believe the political leanings of some involved with and directing the actions of Draw the Line were problematic. The involvement of TakeAction Minnesota was of particular concern to me. TakeAction Minnesota is a liberal interest group that spent almost $200,000 on Independent Expenditures in 2010 against Republicans or in support of Democrats. The involvement of Common Cause was also of concern to me. While Common Cause supposedly stepped back from involvement with our commission once it was started, it is difficult to believe that there was no influence. Even the involvement of the League of Women Voters, with its liberal policy agenda, was of concern to me.

So Kaiser also notes the “commision’s” bias.

• There was a great deal of cross-pollination among these liberal special interest groups but no attempt to cross-pollinate with conservative groups. I do not believe that the appointment of a couple of known conservatives to the commission for the purpose of window dressing suffices in providing a balance or a cross-check.

As I noted in my earlier piece, on the Northern Alliance, and on “The Late Debate” – Kaiser and Mason are indeed Republicans and conservatives – and provided only the faintest waft of “balance” to a group, and a process, that was suffused in every other way with “progressives” and their agenda.

• In addition, I think it is problematic that the people doing the real work for the Panel’s consumption did not represent the political diversity of our state. David Wheeler, the program coordinator, is a former Duluth City Council member and is currently an elected member of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation, who was endorsed for political office by numerous DFLers including Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, State Senator Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis), Duluth Mayor Don Ness and several Minneapolis city councilmembers. In addition, the mapping specialist who was hired at the last minute (Linden Weiswerda) and whom we originally thought was independent and nonpartisan turns out to have worked for President Obama’s campaign in 2008. Here, the staff clearly missed an opportunity to provide a sort of check-and-balance within our process—they easily could have found a Republican-leaning mapping specialist.

• While our mapmaker was a undoubtedly a hardworking individual, he ultimately had to make decisions on Draw the Line’s legislative map that the majority of our commissioners did not have time to examine, change, or weigh in on. Decisions about how to draw the map, about what criteria to emphasize in drawing the map, and about publicity and messaging about the map were determined heavily behind the scenes, by staff. Commission members were asked in a hurried way to consider and approve materials. Several of us had a “trust, but verify” attitude about the arrangement, thinking that there would be an opportunity to get independent verification that the numbers used to determine political indices of the final map were legitimate, yet there ultimately was no opportunity for verification of the work.

Remember – “Draw the LIne” and its apologists tell you that they are all about “transparency”.  And yet the proof was in the pudding.  And the process Kaiser describes is about as transparent as pudding.

Even when our map and report were set, they were “embargoed” until [Friday, October 21], the very last minute to send materials to the Panel, and thus they were not open to public comment, scrutiny, or criticism. This was especially problematic, I think, for a process that was billed as being transparent—it clearly was not transparent.

Kaiser’s conclusion?

I also hope that the map put forward by our commission, as compelling and interesting as its pictorial nature might make it, does not have undue influence in the Panel’s deliberations, for it and the method by which is was developed deserve to be scrutinized in ways that they have not been to this point.

Again, I urge the Panel to reject the map submitted by Draw the Line because the map drawing process was secretive and flawed and ultimately resulted in a poor map.

So a “non-partisan” group “dedicated” to “transparancy” created a redistricting plan that was none of the above, and created a potemkin “commission” to reduce the stench of illegitimacy.

This whole charade should outrage anyone of either party who values genuine multi-partisan discussion of redistricting. .

(more…)

A few weeks ago, I noted that “Draw The Line Minnesota” – a liberal astroturf group floated by fellow liberal astroturf groups Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, Take Action Minnesota and the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits, but which nonetheless protests that it is “non-partisan”- had convened a “Citizens Commission” to take public testimony on redistricting.

Kent Kaiser, one of the members of that commission, is speaking up.  In a letter sent to the judicial Special Redistricing Panel, Kaiser notes the Potemkin nature of the “citizens commission” and, much more importantly, hammers the lack of “transparency” in a process run by a bunch of groups who support “transparency for ye, but not for we”.

The full letter is displayed below the jump.  I’m going to pull some money quotes, and add a bit of emphasis.

Kaiser cuts to the chase fast.  Many critics of the “Draw The Line” process have noted that it served, essentially, as the DFL’s map-drawing process (which, by the way, the DFL never actually did; the DFL caucus submitted no map proposal, despite having a fully-budgeted redistricting office).

Kaiser points out that that seems to be the case:

 Based on my experiences with Draw the Line over the past several months, I urge the Panel to reject the map submitted to the Panel by Draw the Line because the map drawing process was secretive and flawed and ultimately resulted in a partisan map that fails to reflect the objective demographic shifts that have occurred in Minnesota over the past decade. I think that because of its high number of incumbent legislator pairings and because it pairs only Republican members of Congress, the map is too likely to benefit the Democratic Party.

And “Draw The Line’s palaver about “transparency?”:

I am especially concerned that we commission members were not allowed sufficient time or access to the map to critique it objectively or to determine its implications before we were led to approve it..

…While I believe our commission did good work in agreeing on a set of principles for redistricting and in trying to get the public involved in the process, I am concerned that the process used in producing a map was ultimately no better than the State Legislature’s process. I know that I am not the only commission member to think this way.

Bear in mind that Kaiser wasn’t condemning the Legislature’s process; on “The Late Debate” a few weeks ago, he noted that the Legislture’s map adhered to the letter and spirit of the body of law that’s grown up around redistricting in the past forty-odd years in Minnesota.

Not to speak for Kaiser – he does that just fine himself – but I think the point is that for all “Draw The Line”‘s rhetoric, they are really just another partisan effort – and, in this case, one that actually yielded nakedly partisan results:

In a documented email sent to all commission members and staff, another commission member (of unknown political affiliation) voiced concern over the commission’s process, when he was stifled from discussing map alternatives in the last of our meetings. I quote directly from the email here:

The quote is in the full email; it notes that the “Draw The Line” map was, in short, pretty blatantly gerrymandered and, more importantly, was completely at odds with what “Draw The Line” claimed was the “Citizen’s Commission”‘s purported mission; they delivered one map:

‘ With one map, the committee had only one choice. That, of course, is not a choice. And the false claim that it was a committee drawn or even a committee guided map, I could not in good conscious endorse…

I’ve been calling it “the Potemkin Commission”.  That may have been unfair – but it’s pretty clear that the map is a Potemkin Map, delivered under false, trumped-up pretenses.

Despite the committee’s purported dedication to be open and transparent, the  most important part of the map drawing process—the map drawing itself—was notably not open and not transparent, even to the committee members. It was

done in private, “behind closed doors” as Draw the Line’s website puts it, by one or two persons with occasional contributions by some committee members. This is no improvement over the legislature.

The result speaks for itself. The committee’s website says the system is broken. The map the committee ultimately endorsed is substantially similar to the map that the broken process produced ten years ago. That is a severe indictment against the committee’s work in the committee’s own terms.

All of “Draw The Line”‘s talk of “transparency” and “openness” is so much baked wind.

Kaiser continues:

Maps are captivating. They are impressive and persuasive just by virtue of their pictorial nature. Yet our commission has said time and time again, and especially after analyzing our map’s high number of “pairings” of legislators, that our principles could fit many maps, and I hope the Panel will not be persuaded that our commission’s map is the best at applying our own principles, especially inasmuch as it was rushed through production and exposed to little critique or tweaking.

And – let us not forget – painstakingly hidden from public view until the last possible moment, which was last Friday, the deadline for submission to the courts.

More tomorrow.

Gary Gross also writes about Kaiser’s letter.

(more…)

Yesterday, Crow Wing County (CWC) Attorney Don Ryan held the first day of his grand jury deliberations.  While the CWC Attorney’s offices don’t release details of grand jury probes, virtually everyone involved in last year’s Crow Wing County voting irregularities case – over a dozen people – have been subpoenaed.

What happened?

We don’t know – grand jury proceedings aren’t public.  The panel is scheduled to meet through tomorrow.

However, this is going to be a doozy of a story on Thursday, or whenever the grand jury releases its indictments.  Or doesn’t.  Either way.

Today, Crow Wing County (CWC) Attorney Don Ryan is convening a Grand Jury.  As noted last week, county attorneys don’t customarily reveal the subject of a grand jury’s deliberation – but we do know that Monty Jensen and Al Stene, two principals in the case this blog wrote about last year in which it appeared that staffers from a home for vulnerable adults were filling out ballots for their charges.

The Grand Jury is going to be in session, officially, through Thursday.  We likely won’t hear much about the proceedings until they’re over.

I’ve run down the story’s chronology a few times, most recently last week.

I published this bit, last week – but it was buried in the middle of larger PDF file.  I thought I’d break this one out a bit.

It’s the list of people who took out absentee ballots last October 29 – the Friday before election day.

You can see Monty Jensen, who pops up at 4:31 on the list.

And you can see Jim Stene, at 4:18  – who was legally entitled to vote but, according to his father Al, had no interest in voting and no knowledge of how government works (even answering “Gerald Ford” when asked who the president was).

And you can see Daniel Carel (4:24) and Crieg Ruesken (4:21) who, as we showed last week, are under guardianship and unambiguously not allowed to vote under Minnesota law. 

The list shows that Stene, Carel and Ruesken all voted at the time that Jensen said he saw the group from the Clark Lake group home voting, and at which he alleged that he saw their ballots being filled out by staff.   This contradicts statements in the mainstream and alt-media that nobody from Clark Lake was in the building at the time Jensen claimed.

I’ll be bringing you the news from the Grand Jury as soon as I find out more.

In this week’s coverage of the Crow Wing County voter fraud allegations, I reported that Crow Wing County (CWC) Attorney Don Ryan is empaneling a grand jury this coming Tuesday – and while Ryan hasn’t announced the subject, he’s subpoenaed Monty Jensen, who has brought allegations that Clark Lake Group Homes staff bussed mentally handicapped residents to the CWC Court House and filled out their ballots for them.

I have also learned that Al Stene – the father of Jim Stene, a 15-year resident of Clark Lake Group Home – has also been subpoenaed.   The Stenes spoke at the CWC Commission last spring in an emotional testimony that showed Jim Steme – who suffered heartbreaking brain damage in a near-drowning accident as he tried to save his sister in an accident in his teens – hadn’t the slightest interest in politics, and thought the current President was Gerald Ford.  Stene – who is not legally barred from voting – had been a Clark Lake resident for 15 years, and had never voted before last fall, and claimed before the CWC commission to have had no interest in voting.

That is as opposed to the four residents we spotlighted yesterday who were legally barred from voting, in as many words on court orders, who did in fact also vote – in every case, for the first time, last fall.

I may have more – much more – before the grand jury meets on Tuesday.

(Cross-posted at True North)

As I noted yesterday, the Brainerd Dispatch has reported that Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan has empaneled a grand jury for this coming Tuesday.

:While Ryan has not officially announced the subject of the grand jury, he has subpoenad Monty Jensen, the Brainerd resident and disabled veteran whose video claiming to have seen disabled adults having their ballots filled out by group home staff at the Crow Wing County Courthouse the Friday before the last election, in late October 2010.  (I carried the video here, a video that got me an Instalanche right around election day last year).

The case has followed more or less the following rough chronology:

1. The Crow Wing County (CWC) attorney Don Ryan ordered an investigation by the CWC Sheriff’s office.
2. After a Sheriff’s investigation (which interviewed Monty Jensen’s estranged father, but ignored at least one actual witness to the alleged voter fraud), Ryan decided that, in his discretion, there was no case.
3. An avalanche of calumny from the media and the lefty alt-media descended on Monty Jensen.
4. Al Stene, father of James Stene, a resident at Clark Lake Group Home, found that his son – who suffered serious brain damage in a near-drowning accident at age, and knows nothing of politics – had been apparently inveigled into voting.  Stene was outraged.
5. Eric Shawn of Fox News picked up the story.
6. A group of activists have spent much of this year digging for more information.

Which brings us to today.

A source close to the case has provided me with four sets of documents:  each of them a court order showing a Clark Lake Group Home resident to have been placed under guardianship and had their rights to vote explicitly rescinded, and the Crow Wing County absentee ballot lists as well as the ballot envelopes,all indicating that they voted.

Copies are provided below the jump.
(more…)

As I noted earlier today, the Crow Wing County Attorney’s office is empaneling a grand jury starting next Tuesday.

I have learned since then from a source close to the case that the Crow Wing County Attorney has evidence that four residents of the Clark Lake chain of group homes in the Brainerd Lakes area, whose names were found on the county’s absentee voter list for the 2010 election,  had court orders ruling them ineligible to vote.

More tomorrow.

According to the Brainerd Dispatch, a grand jury is being empaneled in Crow Wing County next Tuesday. 

Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan on Tuesday confirmed a petition to convene the grand jury was filed.

However, Ryan is prohibited by law from saying what the grand jury is being called to consider. By law, what transpires in the grand jury chamber is kept secret.

However, the Dispatch notes that Monty Jensen has been subpoenaed to testify:

In the fall of 2010, Jensen said he was at the courthouse when residents of a group home, who were accompanied by staff members, were voting. At the time, Jensen said what he witnessed crossed the line of proper voter assistance and amounted to the manipulation and undue influence of vulnerable adults.

We covered this last November, in what was one of the highest-traffic stories this blog has ever covered; Jensen, in a series of videos that this blog helped go viral, claimed to have seen residents of a group of group homes being assisted with their voting in a manner that allegedly violates state law.

Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan initially declined to pursue much of an investigation – the law allows the county attorney a lot of discretion in such matters.  Sources close to the story, however, indicate that the investigation carried out by the Crow Wing County Sheriff’s Department was “a sham”, which seemed to focus more on Monty Jensen’s bona fides than on the charges he’d made; while Jensen’s father (from whom Monty Jensen had long been estranged) was interviewed extensively, while more than one witness to the actual alleged incident went allegedly uninterviewed.

Since last winter, of course, more evidence has surfaced; at least one resident who had not been ruled incompetent to vote and stated no interest in voting turned up on the absentee voter rolls – not “illegal”, perhaps, but very possibly exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

It is not currently publicly known whether further evidence has prompted Ryan’s action.

In Minnesota, a first-degree murder charge with a life sentence may only come from a grand jury indictment. Election law issues may also be brought to the grand jury. A prosecutor may present factual information to see if there is enough to justify proceeding forward with an indictment in a bank robbery, for instance.

This represents a major reversal on the Crow Wing County Attorney’s part.  As such, a Grand Jury makes sense; while some indictments (like First Degree Murder) require grand jury findings, others are brought to give a County Attorney cover, as if to say “the indictment wasn’t my call; it was the Grand Jury’s decision”.